Blonde Bait for the Murder Master

“It’s going to be a bad thing if anybody finds a pretty woman like that in my shack, and I don’t know what to do with her. Then I remember a place across the tracks where I can take her and she’ll be hid behind the bushes. The ground is wet, but it ain’t a cold night. So I grabbed her by the arm and started to drag her across the tracks and put her over there. Nobody goes over there; then they won’t connect me up with it if she maybe dies.”

“And then what?”

“I can’t remember any more. Just a noise behind me, I think.”

The whole roof had gone, and the flames jumped high. If Anna was across the way, I had to find her. The tracks were brighter than just the firelight could have made them. I didn’t see the Cyclops eye of the freight engine picking up speed on the far track as it came out of the yard; the noise of the fire had obscured the sound of the engine.

Gulbie’s hard fingers bit into my arm. “Look!” he gasped.

I looked where he pointed. One slim leg across the shining steel rail, the slim body face down, the far rail under her chest.

I pulled loose and started to run. The loose stones of the roadbed turned under my feet and I fell heavily. I got up, dazed, and ran two more steps before I saw that it was too late.

The engineer had seen her. The brakes grabbed and the big steel wheels locked and the sparks showered back.

I screamed with all the power of my lungs, and turned my back. The thundering locomotive went on, interminably. The next half hour was disjointed... unreal. The world was like a room reflected in the broken bits of a mirror, and I walked blindly.

There was the screaming siren... floodlights on the destroyed shack... men in fireman’s hats... a train over on the fourth set of tracks... halted... men standing quietly, shining lights on something wet and horrible midway between the trucks of the third freight car. Gulbie’s twisted red face appeared in front of me, and then seemed to spin away to one side. Rain touched my face as I walked down the road, and then I was sitting in my car, foolishly holding the steering wheel, and I couldn’t think whether it was Kit or Anna who had been out there, sprawled across the hard and shining rails. Kit or Anna. Kit or Anna.

Someone shouted as I went back by the fire engine. They hadn’t bothered wasting chemicals on the insignificant shack.

The tires of my car made a wet and sticky noise on the asphalt, and the lights of the city grew more frequent around me. The fizz and sputter of cheap neon.

DINE AND DANCE

COCKTAIL LOUNGE

LEARN TO DANCE

ALL LEGAL BEVERAGES

Something deep inside of me was sour, old, tired. Something broken and something blue.

Maybe there was a white house on a hill for somebody. Not for me. Brian Gage, the sharpie, the angle-boy, the rough man with the hard fists. Something had happened to him. It had happened in the grind of steel on steel...

Then, without knowing how I had come to be there, I was standing and facing a door that was oddly familiar. I looked numbly at it, and then realized that I would have to ring the bell. I pressed my thumb hard against the bell, heard the distant sound of its ringing.

Alight went on and the door opened. I staggered forward and Quinn’s hand was warm and strong on my arm. “Kid, are you tight?”

“No... I... Let me talk to you.”

The bright kitchen lights stung my eyes, I shook my head slowly. Quinn was wearing the old grey robe that I remembered. My voice sounded like the voice of a stranger, and it told of things that seemed already vague in my mind. I finished and there was nothing more to say.

Quinn looked at me, and his eyes were doubtful, questioning.

“Is this another of your bright angles, kid? Is this another power play?”

I looked him in the eyes and shook my head slowly. “That part is all over, Quinn. All done. I’m... I’m going away, I guess.”

They became cop’s eyes; firm and hard and cold. “You’ll come up and stand where I can watch you while I put my clothes on. Then we’ll go to headquarters.”

His hard hands slapped me, looking for a gun. I leaned against the bedroom wall while he dressed. Molly held the covers up around her chin and looked at me with wide and frightened eyes.

Quinn drove my car. I walked beside him into the familiar building. The lieutenant had grey pouches under his eyes, and he sipped his coffee as Quinn put my disjointed remarks in some sort of formal order.

The lieutenant was brisk. He asked me a few simple questions. Then he clattered the cup into the saucer and said, “Okay. That gives us enough to go on in the case of Sentano. You’ve given us the name and the description.”

“He’ll be gone,” I said.

“Maybe. And maybe Fletcher will be dumb enough to keep him around for another job before sending him on his way. But you heard Fletcher give the order?”

“Yes.”

He pushed down the switch on the communications box on his desk and spoke to the radio room.